Best Stock: A former high flyer that's coming back into favor because of improving fundamentals

CNBC

27-05-2025

(This is The Best Stocks in the Market , brought to you by Josh Brown and Sean Russo of Ritholtz Wealth Management.) Josh: This week we saw a few new names hit the Best Stocks in the Market list, including a former high-flier that's now come back into favor. Remember the Snowflake (SNOW) IPO? It was a big deal. At the time it came public in September 2020, investors were clamoring for cloud computing stocks and the whole tech sector was red hot. SNOW debuted with the largest IPO in history, raising $3.36 billion. And, if you can believe it, the stock turned out to have been underpriced. Shares were sold to the public at $120, but ultimately got as high as $300 on the first day of trading. The company had a valuation of $75 billion right out of the gate, a multiple of approximately 75 times its projected full-year revenues. Fun fact — it's the first time I can remember seeing Berkshire Hathaway on the holders list of a hot new issue (Warren Buffett's firm sold its whole position out a long time ago). If you thought that was the top, you hadn't seen anything yet. By Thanksgiving the following year, Snowflake hit its all-time high of $401.89 per share. That was the top of the post-pandemic tech rally. From there, a collapse of over 70% to an all-time low of $107 in September 2024. Shareholders who had held from the IPO for the next four years were now looking at unrealized losses after all that volatility. But then a funny thing happened. The CEO stepped back and took the chairman's role while promoting internally to bring the company's head of AI into the C-Suite and onto the board of directors. The company put together a few quarters in a row of 25% growth and has begun surprising The Street to the upside. Sean's going to share some more of the details below. This is a stock that's still 50% below its all-time high, but is now a double off of the lows and climbing. In my experience, institutions don't mind paying up for a growth company as the story improves. Snowflake's biggest drawback for most professionals has been its long and winding path to full-year profitability. Best stocks stats As of 5/27/2025 morning, there are 106 names on The Best Stocks in the Market list. Top sector ranking: Top 5 Best Stocks by Relative Strength: New addition: Snowflake Sean: SNOW was added to our Best Stocks in the Market list last week following a great earnings report. SNOW is classified as "IT Services" below, but software and software-related names are the strongest stocks in the market right now: The IGV (iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF) is up 2% in total return YTD and up 20% the past year, nearly doubling the performance of the Nasdaq 100 over the past year. Snowflake is a cloud-based data platform that enables organizations to store, manage, and analyze large volumes of data seamlessly across multiple cloud environments. You can't do anything useful in AI if your data isn't clean, organized and unified. Snowflake helps companies optimize their data for machine learning, model-training and other stuff. SNOW went public in September of 2020, right before we experienced the largest tech bubble since the dot-com implosion in 2001. It's had a difficult couple of years if you look at the chart since its inception: As a trader, it's not the prettiest chart. But if it can maintain support around the $190 level, which has been an important level of resistance for the stock going back to 2022, there's some room for the bulls to push this higher. Looking at the chart below since inception, on a weekly basis the stock has been in a down trend, but after this latest earnings beat, both moving averages are beginning to flatten, showing possible support for an uptrend: As an investor, the stock has not been rewarding, but the fundamentals are improving. During last week's earnings call, SNOW beat on the top and bottom lines, with revenue growing 4%, EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes, also known as operating earnings) growing 74%, and EPS growing 13%, all YoY. (Data via Quartr.) SNOW now has 606 companies paying them over $1 million dollars in revenue each, a figure which is up 27% year over year. Gross margins have expanded from 59% in 2021 to 67% today, bringing the company closer to its profitability goals. SNOW's net revenue retention rate hit 124% for the quarter, which is a great sign. A net revenue retention rate of 124% means that, on average, a company's existing customers are spending 24% more, even after accounting for customer churn, downgrades, cancellations, etc. In simpler terms, if you started the year with customers paying $100, by the end of that year, the same group is paying you $124 without adding any new customers. It means existing customers are growing in value to the business. SNOW is not profitable on an operating basis, but with the growth and scale they are achieving, profitability on an operating and net income basis is on the horizon, which would mean higher stock prices with it. Risk Management Josh: Below, I'm zooming in on the last 100 days or so because SNOW has run right back up to its February highs. It's just had a parabolic move higher after reporting great results. Ideally if I'm a trader, I'm waiting for an entry on a low volume pullback into the 190s. I'd use $175 - $180 as my line in the sand. That area should hold as support. If it doesn't, the setup didn't work. Longer-term investors can give it a wider berth and let the flat-lining 200-day (now at $160) turn up a bit. I'd be using that as a stop, checking it on a weekly closing basis each Friday. I was going to end this by saying "Stay Frosty" but then I'd have to slam my own fingers in a desk drawer just to distract from the cringe. And nobody wants that. Good luck out there, Sean and I will return later in the week. DISCLOSURES: (None) All opinions expressed by the CNBC Pro contributors are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC, NBC UNIVERSAL, their parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, internet or another medium. THE ABOVE CONTENT IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY . 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